Correspondence, diaries, financial records, photos, and clippings of seven prominent New England and Pennsylvania families related by marriage: the Alger, Rodgers, Meigs, Taylor, Jackson, Price, and Hubbell families. Topics include World War I and World War II; politics; U.S. history, particularly the Civil War and Reconstruction; and women physicians.

3.4 feet

Barton, JanePapers, 1938-1984

Commander in the United States Naval Reserve, Jane Barton trained at the WAVES school at Mount Holyoke College in 1942 and was in the first class to receive boot training. She was stationed in Washington, D.C., where she was responsible for housing and served as Assistant Public Relations Officer for the Potomac Naval Command. She was also editor of a WAVES periodical first called Scuttlebut and then Havelock, and in 1947 initiated a reunion of WAVES personnel, held in New York City. She later ran a business in public relations in upstate New York, and was program director of the New York State Radio-TV Bureau. Collection includes scrapbooks concerning her work in the WAVES, correspondence, press books, clippings, photographs, etc.

2.75 feet

Cohen, EthelPapers, 1918-1977

The collection consists mainly of professional papers: correspondence, articles, and reports that reflect Cohen's work at Beth Israel Hospital, and as an instructor and consultant. Included are papers concerning the Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel, the Journal of Chronic Diseases, the U.S. Children's Bureau, where Cohen assisted in the Rheumatic Fever Program, 1940, and the Veterans' Administration. There is also an oral history interview, 1976, mainly about Cohen's early life.

2 feet

Collins, Winifred Q.Papers, 1931-1999

Navy Captain Winifred Quick Collins was commissioned an Ensign in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in August 1942, and in 1948 was in the first group of women commissioned in the United States Naval Reserve. In 1957 she was appointed Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, the most senior position for which women were eligible; at that time she was the only woman line officer with the rank of Captain. She retired in 1962, and was active in a number of organizations, including the National Navy League, in which she was the first woman elected vice-president and director (1965). Winifred Collins was married to Rear Admiral Howard Collins.

The records contain official correspondence filed alphabetically and reports and memoranda pertaining to Radcliffe College and student life. Also included is personal material such as clippings; copies of Comstock's speeches and articles; itineraries and income tax returns; and professional material pertaining to her involvement in educational, academic and other national organizations.

Home is Where you Hang Your Hat: A True Story of a Navy Wife, a memoir of Guthrie's life in the 1920s-1940s.

1 folder

Hooker, Richard J.Collection, 1788-1890

Correspondence by housewives and women schoolteachers on such subjects as education, politics, marriage, local and family news, and social life and customs. Included are letters between Lucy Gray and her husband, a Cape Cod sea captain; letters, many of which deal with religious subjects, from friends and relatives to Weltha Brown, a Hartford, Connecticut, schoolteacher; letters in which Hannah Buchanan of Maryland describes to her absent husband the problems of running a plantation; letters by authors Sarah Edgarton and Luella J.B. Case; and a letter by Dolley Madison.

1 foot

Hopper, GraceOral History, 1983

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906- ) is the inventor of COBOL, a computer language, and helped program the first large-scale digital computer, Mark I. She also worked with Mark II and Mark III computers. Typed transcript of three interviews for the 60 Minutes television news program.

1 folder

Nash, Ruth C.Papers, 1905-1990

Journalist Ruth (Cowan) Nash was born in Salt Lake City and attended the University of Texas. Beginning as a weekend movie reviewer, Nash became a reporter for the San Antonio Evening News, and also wrote freelance, using the name Baldwin Cowan, for The Houston Chronicle and other papers. She worked for United Press for several months in 1929 but was fired when UP found out she was a woman. As a reporter for the Associated Press, she was based in Chicago for ten years before joining the Washington press corps in 1940. She was one of the first women accredited as a U.S. Army war correspondent, and served overseas for the AP from January 1943 until May 1945. She was president of the Women's National Press Club (1947-1948) and was a member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (1958-1961).

The collection includes biographical material, financial records, personal and professional correspondence, photographs, speeches, articles, notebooks, audiovisual material, etc. Also included are minutes, newsletters, financial reports, correspondence, and other records of the Women's National Press Club, and material from her work for the Republican National Committee and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

9.5 feet

Radcliffe College, Class of 1943Collection, 1988-1993

Oral history project conducted by members of the Radcliffe Class of 1943 as part of a fiftieth reunion gift from the class. Includes drafts and final copies of twelve oral history interviews with members of the Radcliffe College Class of 1943 and related audiotapes, permissions, reports, and correspondence. Interviews provide profiles of women who grew up in the Depression, graduated from Radcliffe during World War II, and follows their later careers and family lives. Some served in the armed forces; some were civic volunteers; and others had careers in architecture, government service, secondary and higher education, and art history.

1.25 feet, 12 transcripts, and 50 sound recordings

Reynard, ElizabethPapers, 1934-1962

Correspondence, articles, reports, newsletters, manuals, photos, clippings, phonograph records, and other material reflect Reynard's career in the Navy, including her assignments with the WAVES at WAVES Training School, the Naval Training School, and on USS Hunter, as well as information about WAVES personnel and organization regulations, and about other units of military women in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. Also included are manuscripts of poetry and writings on Cape Cod and New England; manuscripts of her The Narrow Land (1934) and Ports of Youth: Fragment of an Autobiography(1946-1947); a scrapbook of reviews of The Mutinous Wind (1951); and material on Armenian studies.

6 feet

Smith, Mark E.Papers, 1970-1997

A biological female who lives as a male, Mark Ethan Smith was born Marcia Ellen Bazer on March 13, 1940. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father an upholsterer. He graduated from Carle Place High School (Carle Place, New York) and left home at 17. During the next twenty-five years Mark Smith married four times (one daughter was raised by Smith's parents, the other given up for adoption), and traveled widely. He lived for a time--often hand to mouth--in Honduras and Afghanistan, where he studied medicine and volunteered at a hospital in Kabul. He took the name Marcia Ellen Smith upon his first marriage in 1960; in September 1981, he changed his name to Mark Ethan Smith. In 1979 he earned a bachelor's degree in New York State with a major in science. In 1982 Smith began work as an aircraft electrician apprentice at the Naval Air Rework Facility in Alameda, California. Although identified on the application as a woman, Smith was permitted, at the time of conditional appointment, to use the name Mark E. Smith. He was discharged and subsequently filed suit against the Navy and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging unlawful discrimination. Smith was the editor of Nontraditional News, published by the Foundation for Role Equity Education, for which he also served as secretary/treasurer.

The collection includes essays; personal correspondence, 1970s; school papers; tax and other financial records; and correspondence, court documents, and supporting material for Smith's various court cases, 1983-1995.

The Women's Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, formerly known as the WAVES was established on July 30, 1942. Biographies of women in the Navy: Captains Winifred Redden Quick and Louise K. Wilde; history of the WAVES; and papers of a Conference of Women District and Air Command Assistants.